Know the Rules to Receive Free Diabetes Medications from Manufacturers

People with diabetes probably look as hard for free drugs as party crashers look for a free lunch. Both are sometimes there for the taking, but you have to know where to look.

The surprising fact about free drugs is that the best place for most people to look for them is in your doctor’s office. In my experience doctors often have more free samples than places to store them.

If you qualify financially, you can look for free drugs directly from the manufacturer. More than 100 pharmaceutical companies will provide more than 1,000 of their drugs free to needy recipients, if you know how to ask.

You can cut your prescription costs in even more ways. I save almost 50 percent by using generic metformin instead of the brand name Glucophage that I used to take.

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I cut the cost of a medicine that I take for benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) by cutting it in half. The manufacturer prices that generic drug the same for all strengths of this pill.

I buy Allegra for my allergies from an online drugstore in Canada. It’s an over-the-counter drug there.

These are five of the 17 tips about “Free and Low Cost Prescription Drugs” that the Cost Containment Research Institute includes in its downloadable prescription drugs booklet. It’s free.

You can find links to other free resources on a couple of my web pages, Financial Aid and Free Drugs. Those web pages also include a couple of programs that make modest charges.

As far as I know those programs are all legitimate. I haven’t tried them myself, so use them at your own risk. There are a lot of scams out there.

Just a couple of days ago this intriguing press release came into my mailbox: “Free prescription drugs for Diabetics are available to households with incomes as high as $80,000,” it said. It sounded too good to be true so I checked it out.

There are at least two catches. They want $5 up front for each medication you try to get free, and it comes with no guarantee. Tain’t free.

Remember that any time you start looking for something for nothing, you often end up with nothing for something.